


paint-stained fingers

by Jade_Sabre



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25536790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre
Summary: Jester has a portrait to paint.  Caleb makes a very good model.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 30
Kudos: 133
Collections: Widojest Week 2020





	paint-stained fingers

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to post all my Widojest Week fics in one place, but this became a behemoth and I thought it deserves its own post. Much thanks to the artists of the Widojest server, especially poyo, for walking me through my absolute ignorance of how painting works. All remaining mistakes are mine alone. Hope you enjoy! :-)

The circumstances leading to Jester painting a portrait of Lady Rymmer were far too complicated for this simple tale, as was the ensuing chaos when the portrait was delivered. For now, suffice to say that the Mighty Nein were visiting Port Damali on an errand for the Gentleman, and that Jester had been tasked with painting a flattering portrait of Lord Gabriel Rymmer’s wife.  
  
After much hemming, hawing, rock-paper-scissorsing, thumb warring, and short-straw drawing, Caleb had been elected to cast _seeming_ on himself so that Jester would have an accurate model of Lady Rymmer to work with. While the rest of the Mighy Nein explored the city and presumably stayed out of trouble, the two of them holed up in the girls’ room to work. Or at least, for Jester to work.  
  
“I can’t read?” he asked, as she plucked a book from Lady Rymmer’s fingers.  
  
“Not until I have the initial sketch done,” she told him, struggling to keep a stern expression in the sight of Caleb’s disappointment on Lady Rymmer’s face. “And even then you might have to drop it so I can make sure I’m getting the lighting right.”  
  
He sighed. “Very well.”  
  
She grinned and pulled a chair in front of the open window. “Sit,” she said, and after a moment he did. She glanced at his skirts, thought about asking him to rearrange them, and decided instead to do a bust-up portrait. Really, she could probably get away with just the face, but having a bit of neckline to decorate would give her something to do when she got bored with the limpid blue eyes and curly black locks. Without really thinking about it, she reached to take his chin in her hand; her fingers went through the chin and touched something that felt remarkably like a bottom lip, or at least what she assumed someone else’s bottom lip might feel like, and in any case Caleb squirmed in his chair, trying not to try to jerk away from her touch.  
  
“Sorry!” she said, letting her fingers trail their way down his face until she felt the dimple in his chin, and for a moment she lingered, though she felt her cheeks warm, because she’d always wondered what it would feel like. Like a chin, mostly, just a little soft divot, but it made a perfect cradle for her finger and his breath blew warm and quick over her skin, his breathing shallow, his eyes trained on the ceiling.  
  
She finally took his chin in her hand, though she appeared to be holding onto nothing in the space in front of Lady Rymmer’s throat, which was a little weird. She turned his face this way and that, inspecting Lady Rymmer’s cheekbones, the line of her nose, the curve of her lips. The deceptively perfect arch of her brow. And then she leaned in closer and looked deep into Lady Rymmer’s eyes, which were blue like Caleb’s except not, not at all, deeper and more oceanic, and was that eyeliner? She leaned in—  
  
—and her nose bumped into the invisible tip of Caleb’s nose, because of course Lady Rymmer’s nose was smaller, and he stuttered something that wasn’t a word and she felt her cheeks go hot and he _had_ to be blushing, like, all over, not just the delicate flush _seeming_ made rise to Lady Rymmer’s cheeks, but more to the point she was blushing too. So she pushed her nose into his harder, leaned in until her forehead bumped his and she could almost see through the illusion to see the panic in the familiar sky-blue of his eyes.  
  
“Sorry,” she said again, only it came out a little less confident than she meant, a little softer, and after a moment she realized he wasn’t breathing at all. “Caleb?”  
  
He made a strangled noise, then cleared his throat, and she winced and drew away. “Have you,” and then he cleared his throat again, “can I…help you?”  
  
“Just looking!” she said cheerfully, from a safe six-inch distance. But her fingers still held his chin, and so for a moment she made a bit of a play of turning his head this way and that again; and then she used both hands to position his head exactly as she wanted it, three-quarter turn, as if he was in the act of turning away from the window; and she didn’t let her fingers trail through his hair. She kept up a steady stream of babble as she worked, all “no, no, like _this_ , there you go, that’s better!” in the face of his silence as she took his shoulders and positioned them as well, noting as she did so that his breathing was still shallow, which made her heart hammer in her chest for no reason at all.  
  
She was just arranging Lady Rymmer, she told herself. It didn’t _matter_ that she was so close, that her hands were all over him, now picking up his hands—and _that_ felt silly, his long fingers hiding beneath Lady Rymmer’s dainty digits—and artfully arranging them in his lap, She had to lean over him and felt his breath again, warm on the skin of the crook of her neck, and couldn’t suppress a shiver, couldn’t help but let her fingers fall between his, if but for a moment, before drawing back; his breath hitched and something hot and burning dropped from her chest to her stomach and exploded there, and she had to steady herself against the back of the chair.  
  
He didn’t, she reminded herself, even _look_ like Caleb, and even if he had he’d still just be— _Caleb_ , with that handsome dimple in his chin and those hands that she wanted—she wished—  
  
And she remembered she wasn’t going to bother drawing the lap. “That’s perfect!” she said aloud, to cover her foolishness, to remind herself of where she was and what she was doing, and she focused her eyes on Lady Rymmer’s insane black ringlets—like, how many hours did she spend on her hair _every day_?—and her stomach settled and she backed up all the way across the room and busied herself with her easel and her canvas so that she didn’t have to see any expression of Caleb’s brewing in Lady Rymmer’s insipid eyes.  
  
A thought occurred to her—she glanced up at saw him frowning at her, ever-so-slightly, and she said, “You’re going to have to smile.”  
  
The smile was pure Caleb, pained and forced and awkward and a little creepy, and she laughed and it softened, smiling at _her_ , and she said without thinking, “Oh no, that’s too nice.”  
  
He froze for a moment, and then the smile disappeared and a perfect expression took its place: haughty, condescending, touched with a smile of security in his— _her_ superiority, because this was pure Lady Rymmer—pure Cerberus Assembly, if she was honest, and her heart tightened in her chest, looking at it.  
  
But she plastered a big smile on her face and said, “ _Perfect_. Now just—hold that.”  
  
She saw him start to nod, freeze, and then glance at her to make sure he hadn’t moved too much; she gave him a thumbs-up and he blinked once in acknowledgement, then fixed his gaze straight ahead of him. She followed it, saw he was looking at an extremely boring patch of wooden wall, and after a moment took her charcoal and drew a dick there.  
  
“Thank you,” he said, his voice courteous, if somewhat unnatural coming from _that_ expression on _her_ face.  
  
“You’re welcome,” she said, equally courteous, and then she started sketching. In her sketchbook, first, to make sure she had the lines right, and then she did a few more sketches of other things that she thought were more interesting. And then she realized she’d sketched Caleb’s nose and his chin and his eyes, so she turned the page and did a quick and harsh version of Lady Rymmer’s face with a dick for a nose, and if that didn’t stop her blushing it at least steadied her hand enough to start on the primed canvas.  
  
“It has been—”  
  
“I didn’t say you could talk,” she said, though she was working on the shoulders and he really wasn’t moving his mouth very much at all.  
  
“—one hour,” he said. “You have seven remaining.”  
  
“Thanks,” she said, realizing at that moment her tongue was sticking out as she focused. She pressed her lips together and said, “Let me know if you need to, like, pee or anything.”  
  
“Hm,” he said, and fell silent again.  
  
She didn’t spend very long outlining, just enough to sketch a rough background and the space her hair would occupy. Then she devoted her attention to capturing the face, first with swift pencil lines as a guide, and then, reluctantly, with brush and paint. Normally she loved painting, but normally she was painting something she loved. She didn’t even know Lady Rymmer, really, let alone like her, and more to the point she _had_ to get this right. She didn’t like the pressure, either.  
  
She glanced up to check her subject and discovered his eyes on her, though he immediately looked to the wall when he noticed her. She looked back at her canvas, made another stroke, and as she went to dip her brush back in the paint he said, “You’ve got this.”  
  
She glanced sharply at him, but his eyes were on the wall, his expression fixed and haughty. She wanted to grumble at him for talking, to laugh off his encouragement as if she didn’t need it; but his words warmed her, quiet and earnest as they’d been, even as she wanted to shrivel from the embarrassment that he’d noticed her doubt.  
  
He was good at that, noticing, almost _too_ good, and she was very good at _not_ noticing how often he noticed her, because nothing ever came from it except—except kindness and support and sweet gestures that never went anywhere because—because probably he pitied her, and just wanted to help.  
  
That wasn’t true. But it was easier than thinking— _what_?  
  
She studied Lady Rymmer’s face, and wondered if he’d stolen the expression from Astrid.  
  
 _Not_ helpful; and she dove back into her work, priming layers, eking out the shifting shades of her skin, the depths of blue in her eyes. She mixed colors and cleaned her brush and mixed more, trying to trust her instinct, trying to make sure she thought before she committed her brush to the canvas. The whole process felt— _cold_ , and she didn’t like it and forced herself to do it anyway; she tried to reach into herself and imagine the joy on Lady Rymmer’s face when she received this beautiful portrait of herself, tried to tell herself that she was making something that somebody somewhere would hang on a wall and admire, and smile when they saw it.  
  
She found herself staring at the frost in Lady Rymmer’s eyes, long enough that they shifted and met hers and smiled, almost involuntarily, before the expression smoothed over again. But now she could imagine the smile, warm and fond, and she found a renewed confidence in her strokes as she went.  
  
Time continued to pass and she continued to paint, occasionally pausing to rotate her wrists or wiggle her fingers, and occasionally her model would cough, or shift a foot across the floor, but for the most part he was still and she was working, and the room was quiet and peaceful. The face took shape upon the canvas, smooth and alluring and haughty and distant, and while she still wasn’t enthusiastic about it she found herself admiring her own skill, able to pick out details that pleased her, clever strokes for the eyelashes, an impressively perfect earlobe. Soon enough she was mostly done with the face and let it dry while she idly swept thin layers of paint around the background and started to contemplate how on _earth_ she was ever going to capture all those inky curls.  
  
“It has been,” and his voice startled her; she’d been so engrossed in Lady Rymmer she’d almost forgotten Caleb was the one sitting in her place, “four hours, and I need. You know.”  
  
She blinked at him, still trying to match his voice to the face in front of her. His expression had completely changed, slightly anxious, slightly embarrassed, not at all the face she’d practically committed to memory at this point, and as she shook her head to clear it she said, “To pee?”  
  
“ _Ja_ ,” he said, in a voice that implied he’d waited until the last possible second to ask.  
  
She made a show of sighing and rolling her eyes as she said, “All _right_ ,” but he missed half of it, tearing out of the room as soon as she opened her mouth. “Don’t let people see you!” she called after him, and then she looked down at her painting and nodded. Coming along. The paint was new, and nicer than what she was used to, but she could already see which layering techniques had been more successful at smoothing out the skin, and so if she did her brush—like _that_ , twirling at the edge of the background where it’d just get covered up anyway—that looked like a curl. Maybe if she just glopped it on thick for each one? Or maybe she should just use broad strokes, and go back over it to give the suggestion of curls afterwards.  
  
She cleaned her brush, left it in the oil pot, and stood up and found herself swaying, her stomach grumbling. “Oh man,” she said to the room, “I’m _hungry_.”  
  
“A break for lunch, then?” said his voice behind her.  
  
She whirled around and Lady Rymmer stood in the door with Caleb’s half-smile on her face and she closed her eyes against the sight. “Sounds good,” she said. “I’ll go get it, though. You probably, um, shouldn’t be seen. Might confuse people.”  
  
“Good point,” he said, and they stood there for another moment, each waiting for the other to move, she thought, and finally she took a step forward and Caleb dodged around her and made a beeline for his book and she left the room laughing, closing the door behind her.  
  
They’d missed the lunch hour and so she had to wait for the cook to fry their fish and chips, and in the meantime she sat on a stool at the bar by herself, drinking coconut milk and idly tracing Captain Tusktoothes on the bar with the tip of her tail. None of the other members of the Nein were in sight, and she tried not to be jealous of them. She’d always wanted to see Port Damali, and while the others had assured her there’d be plenty of time to go sight-seeing after the job, she wasn’t convinced. They’d thought that about Nicodranas the first time, and about Darktow, too.  
  
She didn’t _mind_ painting, she just had so many other things she’d rather be doing—  
  
And then she thought with a guilty start about Caleb, sitting in that chair for four hours straight and it wasn’t even _his_ portrait she was painting. But he was all right, she told herself. He was smart and his brain was always going, so he probably had lots of think about. Spells to try to figure out, and all that. Maybe some of the thinking was even kind of happy. Though to keep that expression on his face…  
  
The food arrived and she took the plates and her coconut milk back up to the room, where she discovered Caleb had holed himself up on a chair in the far corner of the room with his book. “Thank you,” he said as she handed him his plate, barely looking up long enough to make sure he had a decent grip on it before she let go.  
  
“You’re welcome,” she said, which felt silly, because what was she, a serving girl? But he didn’t look up, just started scarfing down fish and chips, blowing on his fingers and shaking them after every bite with a slight wince on his face, except of course it was still Lady Rymmer’s face and she’d probably never been so undignified in her life.  
  
She giggled, watching him, and limpid blue eyes darted in her direction, then back to the book. She sat on the bed in the opposite corner—not that the room was very big—and waited for her food to cool down, looking everywhere but the canvas propped up near Caleb. Who was still reading his book. And she couldn’t exactly begrudge him that, and yet…  
  
“What have you been thinking about?” she asked, and then stuffed a piece of fish in her mouth.  
  
Mistake. It was still too hot, and as she tried desperately to suck air in around it without spitting it out, he looked up at her and said, “What?”  
  
“You know,” she said as she chewed as quickly as possible, “while you’ve just been sitting there.” She swallowed, and since he was still looking at her in mild confusion, she repeated, “What have you been thinking about?”  
  
“Oh,” he said, wrinkling his nose and furrowing his brow, though on Lady Rymmer’s face both gestures were more delicate, less stormy, “you know, all sorts of things.”  
  
“Obviously,” she said, and when he continued to wrinkle in her direction she said, “I mean, you were sitting there for _four hours_ , Caleb.”  
  
“Yes,” he said. “It was a very long time.”  
  
“So what did you think about?”  
  
He sighed and bit off a chip, looking back to his book, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. She started scolding her heart for sinking so low in her chest—he didn’t _have_ to tell her, it was his business, she’d always known he was a private individual—and then he said, “Well, for the first hour I catalogued all my spell components. Then I made a list of ones that need replenishing—my cocoon for Polymoph is practically mothballs. And then I thought about some spells I am hoping to puzzle out, and how much paper and ink they will require, and what components they will need. Then I calculated how much all of that will cost.”  
  
She realized she’d stopped listening three words in, blinked and shook her head, trying to focus. “That’s—wow,” she said. “That took you an hour?”  
  
“Approximately,” he said, and she was sure if she could have seen his actual face his eyes would have been twinkling, catching her boredom.   
  
“So what’d you do with the rest of the time?” she asked, propping her chin on her hand, her tail arcing over her shoulder to underscore the query.  
  
Lady Rymmer’s blue eyes stared back at her blankly, as if he thought he’d already answered the question, and she had to look away. She pretended she was very interested in choosing a chip, and then another, and another, as the silence stretched on, and her tail drooped back to the bed.  
  
“Well,” he said finally, and she curled her hand into a fist to keep from looking to him too quickly, “I thought about other things. I listened to the sounds coming in through the window. I watched you—paint,” and he stuttered between the words and she couldn’t help looking at him at that. “Tried to figure out how you do it,” he said, a little too hastily, and she felt a warm tingling in her cheeks and didn’t try to fight it. “You are very—deft.”  
  
She couldn’t help a giggle, either, and Lady Rymmer’s delicate brows knit together and a delicate blush sprang to her cheeks and Jester could practically see Caleb trying to retract his head into his coat like a turtle. “Thank you,” she said sweetly, and the blush deepened, and as much as she wanted to keep teasing him she found herself saying instead, “no, really, thank you, I know you must be so bored but it’s been a really big help, and—”  
  
“It’s,” and a delicate hand waved her off, and Lady Rymmer’s eyes couldn’t quite meet hers, “not a—you’re welcome.”  
  
“But you must be so bored,” she said again, staring at him, willing him to meet her gaze and tell her— _what_? Was she that insecure? (Yes.) Did it matter?  
  
“Well,” he said, glancing towards the book on his lap, “perhaps a little. But it’s worth it,” he said, and for a moment he dared to meet her gaze.  
  
Or at least, Lady Rymmer’s eyes met hers, but the look in them was so unlike the expression she’d painted, and she heard, unspoken, _you’re worth it_ , and she suddenly didn’t know what to do.  
  
She looked away first and immediately stuffed a handful of chips in her mouth. He didn’t say anything, and when she looked up he was reading his book again, holding it in front of his face. So she finished her lunch, wiped her greasy fingers on her skirt, and said, “Well, the good news is, I’m almost done with the face, so, you know, when I’m done with that, you can…”  
  
 _Go_ , she meant to say, but jealousy and loneliness bubbled up in her heart and closed her mouth. And he closed his book and looked up with perfect disinterest, so she figured he’d finished the sentence for himself. “Back to it, then,” was all he said, and he set his book on the chair and went to sit in front of the window again.  
  
“Oh _man_ ,” she said as soon as he sat down.  
  
“What?” he asked, alarmed.  
  
She went back to her canvas, looked at him, looked back at the canvas and said, “The lighting’s all changed, I have to—”  
  
A globe of light appeared over the painting, and for a moment all she could do was blink, and then she looked over to him to see three more floating docilely around his head. Lady Rymmer had probably never looked so hesitant in her life as he said, “I can—put them where you’d like—”  
  
“ _Caleb_ ,” she said in absolute delight, and she immediately bounded over to him, squaring his shoulders, tilting his chin—and her fingers accidentally skipped over his lips again, and she _did not_ let them linger—and then pointing where she wanted the globes to go. He didn’t move a muscle as they gently bobbed around, following her lead, until she had them right where she wanted. “That is incredible. You’re brilliant. I’ll hurry, I promise.”  
  
He made a noncommittal hum as she skipped back to her canvas, grabbed her brush, and went back to work. Shadows under the chin, inside the ear, along the nose, and with that the face was practically done; she brushed at it here, dabbed at it there, and then told herself to stop avoiding the inevitable, cleaned her brush again, and started on the curls. She painted and scraped away and painted and scraped away until she finally hit upon a stroke that made her happy, and then she did it over and over again, painting each one individually. She worked on the background while each layer dried before returning to the curls, slowly adding highlights, thickening the paint as she went, until they was good enough, or would have to be, because the paint was going to take forever to dry.  
  
She blinked and stretched her neck from side to side, rolled her shoulders, and finally turned the easel around so that Caleb could see it. She went to his side and cocked her head, considering it from a distance. “What do you think?”  
  
“Hm?” he said, and she glanced and realized he was still staring at the wall.  
  
“You can move!” she said, and he turned his head and considered the painting.   
  
“It’s not finished,” he said, not quite asking a question.  
  
“Oh no,” she assured him. “But I can do the shoulders and the window and all that without you sitting here. I just needed the face. And the hair. Does it look all right?”  
  
“It looks lovely,” he said.  
  
She pursed her lips. “Do you think the hair is all right?”  
  
“I think it’s very…” Standing this close, she could practically hear the gears in his head as they turned. “Glossy. And well-defined.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“ _Ja_ ,” he said, “but I don’t know anything about painting—”  
  
“Well hopefully neither does she,” she said, mostly cheerful. She stood by him another moment, then realized she was simply dragging her heels, selfishly, and so she went back to the easel and turned it around and hid behind it as she said, “You can go if you want.”  
  
“Are you sure?” he said, sounding surprised, but she didn’t look up from her paints.  
  
“Yeah!” she said, entirely cheerful and lying to him through her teeth.  
  
“I have another two hours left on the spell,” he said, hesitantly, and she stared at the painting, at Lady Rymmer’s haughty expression, and felt her own face start to crumple.  
  
“It’s fine!” she lied again, tightening her fist around her brush. “You can drop it and go, I’ll just be finishing up these last few things—”  
  
A shadow fell across the easel, and she pressed her lips together and refused to look up. “You’re sure,” he said, again not quite asking a question. “It’s no trouble—”  
  
She looked up at him, at Lady Rymmer’s concern, and then back to her painting. “You can drop the spell, Caleb,” she said, flat and truthful. “Honestly if I never have to look at her face again after this it’ll be too soon.”  
  
“Well,” he said, and then he was quiet, but he also didn’t move. Her tail twitched along the floor and she stared at the painting and waited, but he simply stood there, waiting in turn for—what? She finally glanced up at him and—and he was Caleb again, and for a moment she simply stared at him, relief and something like fondness but stronger than that bubbling up in her chest as she drank in the familiar sharp lines of his face, the heavy brow, the dimple on his stubbled chin. Gosh, he looked _good_ , and then their eyes met and his were the right shade of blue again, the sky over the sea, and he was looking at her with that quiet serious concern that made her a little weak at the knees with _relief_ , she told herself sharply, that he _looked like himself again_.  
  
She grinned up at him, as cheesy as she could muster, and said, “That’s much better.”  
  
He blinked and blushed and that helped with the weak-knees a little but didn’t help at all with the fluttering in her stomach. He opened his mouth and closed it and she kept grinning at him, laughing a little now, and finally he said, “Would you like…company?”  
  
Something in her chest skipped a beat. “Really?” she said, and even to her own ears she sounded totally pathetic and he would probably—  
  
Shrug, and say, “I have some reading to do,” and indicate the book in his hand. “I can sit here while you paint. If you don’t mind.”  
  
Her face felt caught between two smiles, the cheerful lie and the grateful truth, and as her lips wobbled between them she said, “Oh, you know. If you want. I don’t,” she added quickly, and when his brow furrowed she said, “Mind.”  
  
His expression cleared and he smiled at her, and then he dragged the chair over from the window to sit next to her as she stood in front of her painting and continued to work. Or tried to. For the first five minutes or so all she could concentrate on was the sound of him breathing, the scritch as he turned a page, and the fact that her fingers kept fluttering instead of keeping a decent grip on her brush. She wasn’t alone. He’d stayed.  
  
Not that big a _deal_ , Jester, he just wanted to get some reading done in peace and quiet.  
  
But he could have gone to his own room and done that. He’d stayed, _with her_.  
  
She took a deep breath and painted a thin layer of dicks all over the background, dark and hiding in the shadows, the brush strokes themselves destined to disappear beneath the layers to come; but she’d know they were there, and that steadied her hand. She left them to dry and worked on the details outside the window, resisted the urge to add one more highlight to the curls, revisited the jewels glittering on the neck. Another, thicker layer on the walls, a few more dabs on the clouds outside, and she kept painting, though her brush was more restrained in the detail work.  
  
And then suddenly she was almost done, or as done as she was going to be, given that the painting had to be delivered the next night and needed to dry completely in the meantime. She lifted her brush again, looked at it, and finally dropped her hand, sighing.  
  
“You’ve finished?” Caleb said.  
  
She jumped, clattering her brush against the paints. “Yes! Maybe? I think so,” she said. “What do you think?”  
  
She looked at him while he looked at the painting, his brow furrowed, and she searched his expression for hints of his opinion. “I think so,” he said. “You’ve certainly captured her essence.”  
  
“Thanks to you,” she said, and he glanced at her and smiled tightly. “You might not be very good at accents but you’re really good at modeling.”  
  
“Oh,” he said, startled in turn, and he looked away from her, back to the portrait. “Well. You did the painting.”  
  
“I did,” she said, considering her work. “It’s pretty good, huh?”  
  
“You are very talented,” he said, and she stared very hard at the portrait and had the feeling that next to her, he was doing the same, as if the ferocity of their focus could provide a balance to the weight filling the space between them, words unspoken and feelings unfelt and a pull like a dunamancy spell dragging them towards each other, crushing the air in her lungs. She could choke on the tension. And _why_? What would happen if she looked at him right now? What could possibly—  
  
She thought she knew and she wouldn’t allow herself to finish the thought.  
  
The silence stretched on and she was so _sick_ of staring at some stupid noblewoman’s face, but she made herself take a deep breath before lifting the canvas off the easel and laying it on the bed to dry. Turning her back on it, she considered the empty easel and found herself saying, “Do you want to give it a try?”  
  
“Me? What—painting?” he asked, startled again and not sounding particularly enthusiastic.  
  
But that was all right, because she had enough enthusiasm for the both of them. “Yeah!” she said, diving for her haversack and digging for an old canvas she kept around for playing with. The whole bottom half was blank, and she set it on the easel and picked up her pencil. “What do you want to paint?”  
  
“I—I don’t know,” he said, his hands pressed to the open pages of his book as if to keep himself from closing it. “I don’t think—”  
  
“Frumpkin,” she decided, and his eyes brightened amidst the confusion. Sketching the cat didn’t take long—she’d drawn him more times than she could count at this point—and then she set to mixing colors, trying to find the right shades of sand and brown and orange.  
  
“I—appreciate,” he said eventually, “the offer, but I don’t think I have the talent for it.”  
  
“Caleb,” she said, dragging out his name, keeping her eyes on the paint, “I’ve seen all that stuff you draw in your spell book. And that has to be _super_ -precise, right?”  
  
“Yes,” he said, cautious and reluctant.  
  
“If you can do that, you can do this,” she assured him, and turned to him just in time to catch a wary hunger in his eyes before he blinked it away. “Besides, it’s fun!”  
  
“If you—”  
  
“Here,” she said, picking up his hand and placing a brush in it. He closed his mouth and looked down at it and she ignored him in favor of sliding his book off his lap and carefully setting it next to the painting on the bed. “You have to stand up.”  
  
To his credit he did stand, and she slid the chair away from him and then stood behind him, putting her hands on either side of his waist in order to propel him towards the canvas. She took a deep breath and oh, he’d bathed recently, and that nice clean soap scent filled her nose alongside the fresh air and the books and the ink and the cat, and for a moment her hands fell away and she simply stood there, breathing him in and resisting with all her might the urge to throw her arms around his middle and bury her face in his back.  
  
“Now what?” he asked, and she gratefully stepped beside him and went to take his hand. But from this angle he was just a little too tall, and she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach all the way—and so without allowing herself to think about what she was doing, she slipped under his arm and then wrapped hers around his, and placed her hand on top of his hand.  
  
And then immediately lifted her other hand to help adjust his grip on the brush, ignoring her pounding heart, ignoring how _warm_ he was at her back, how shallow his breathing had become. “There you go,” she said, and his breath stirred the bell on her horn. “Now, you just—pick your color,” and she guided his hand with the brush to the blob of paint she’d prepared, “and then—that’s too much, wipe it off here,” and she moved his hand so that he dabbed the excess paint onto the palette, and he let her, his hand practically limp within hers though his grip on the brush was steady, “and then you—paint!”  
  
She guided his first stroke, broad and straight, and then she pulled his hand back a little and moved it to the next spot and guided him again, and very slowly she felt him respond, felt him start to take agency and determine where the next stroke should go. His strokes were light, hesitant things, and she gently pressed her fingers against his to encourage him.  
  
She helped him go back for more paint, and then she simply rested her hand atop his as he moved the brush back and forth in careful, steady strokes that lulled her into a sort of hypnosis, carrying away all her stress and frustration. After a day of working on something she didn’t really like, watching someone else paint was—nice, and his arm was almost around her and he was warm and without really thinking about it she leaned her head back to rest it on his chest.  
  
To his credit, he finished the stroke and lifted his brush off the canvas before he could make a blob; but he held still until she sighed and shifted until her shoulders rested against his chest, too, closing her eyes so she wouldn’t accidentally see his face. And she pretended that he wasn’t afraid, that he was just trying to decide whether or not to pick a new color—oh, she hadn’t shown him how to do that—and then he started painting again, and gradually her arm slipped from his until all pretense that she was doing anything other than leaning against him while he reached over her shoulder and painted was pretty much gone.  
  
And gosh, it was nice. Sure he was skinny, didn’t have the rippling pectorals of the heroes in her books, but he was enough for _her_ , the fire in his chest radiating through his shirt and into her stiff muscles, and she understood, a little, what all the books meant when they talked about melting into someone. The scent of him still filled her nose, a note of sweat joining the others, but that was actually not bad either, if not exactly… _relaxing_. And she could hear his heartbeat pounding against her head as if he was going for a run, not sedately running a paintbrush over a canvas. She was a really good healer; she could tell the difference. But his breathing wasn’t deep enough for running, was shallow, as careful as his brushstrokes, as if his breath alone was keeping him from vanishing or exploding or doing anything else to escape—  
  
She frowned at that, at herself, eyes still closed and still trying to pretend—but he wasn’t comfortable and she was making him uncomfortable and to what _purpose_? If he wanted what she—not that she wanted anything, she was just—experimenting, trying on a feeling, that was all, and it was cruel to do that at his expense. She didn’t _want_ anything from him and if that was a lie well he obviously didn’t want anything from her either and if _that_ was a lie then why—then _why_ —  
  
She heard a clatter and opened her eyes to see him carefully set the brush down, his arm still resting on her shoulder. She looked at the painting; the first layer of Frumpkin’s fur done, all neat and within the lines, and she couldn’t help a little proud smile at that, though it was full of sadness because the game was up and she’d have to—  
  
Watch, as his arm bent at the elbow, as his hand came across her to take hold of her other shoulder.  
  
Her turn to stop breathing; maybe he’d hypnotized himself, wasn’t thinking about the fact that he’d just _put his arm around her_ , the heat of his palm burning through the sleeve of her dress and his thumb brushing against the bare skin of her shoulder and she was on _fire_ like he’d made her the epicenter of a spell, heat snaking and curling through her stomach, her fingers splayed wide at her side, exploding, her knees trembling with the weight of _being alive_ and next to him and her every instinct wanted to press back against him and see what—see what happened—and all her strength went into pressing her tail along her leg instead of wrapping it around one of his, into otherwise _not moving_ , into not letting him know—not letting him know—  
  
Her lips quivered and she pressed them together and tried not to—scream? Laugh? Cry? She didn’t even know; she just knew that she _wanted_ , wanted the feel of his hair between her fingers and his lips against—well, hers, but also literally anywhere, she didn’t care, she just wanted _him_ and she wanted _more_ and he—  
  
“Good job,” she squeaked, the words strangled in her throat, and immediately he released her, straightened from where he’d apparently been leaning over her, leaving her suspended in the cold stale air of the room for a moment and her legs weren’t going to be able to—  
  
Hands, warm and firm, on her shoulderblades, propping her up. Slowly turning her around, holding onto her shoulders as she felt herself wobble, her feet tripping over themselves, and she couldn’t raise her eyes above his throat, his Adam’s apple kind of big and bobbing as he swallowed hard. “Are you—”  
  
She looked up then, caught his gaze as neatly as he drew spell components from his pockets, knowing precisely where and exactly how to look to stop him in his tracks, because she didn’t want to hear the rest of the question, didn’t want pity or concern from afar. She accused him with her eyes, and to his credit he flinched and stopped talking, and though he didn’t drop his hands he did loosen his grip. Which wasn’t exactly what she wanted; she wanted him to make up his mind about what _he_ wanted and she wanted him to decide he wanted _her_ , but she knew he wouldn’t. Not today, anyway, and she glared at him and now his hands did fall away and she crossed her arms and turned her head, still unbearably close to him and still wanting too many impossible things too much to step away.  
  
“Well,” he said, into the silence, clearing his throat, “it has been seven hours and forty-two minutes.”  
  
A statement full of apology and sadness, and she hated how she couldn’t stay mad at him for long. “What,” she said, rolling her eyes, “do you need to pee again?”  
  
He laughed, short and sweet. “No.”  
  
She rolled her eyes again and this time felt strong enough to look at him. “Then you should probably drink some more water, you know, it’s important to stay hydrated, Caleb.”  
  
Their eyes caught for a moment when she said his name, and then he looked down and said, “You are right, and to that end, do you want to…” He shrugged, self-effacing, aware of his hypocrisy and ashamed of it and asking anyway. “Get a snack and wait for the others?”  
  
She could say _no_ , could let him go off on his own, as alone as he’d chosen to be; but then she’d be alone too, stuck in the room with nothing but the portrait of Lady Rymmer to keep her company, and that wasn’t worth the price.  
  
“Sure,” she said, and he half-smiled at her. And then he turned away and squared his shoulders and she did the same, sighing away the wanting and wishing and longing for another day, until she felt she could take a breath without wanting to cry. “Just let me clean up.”  
  
“I’ll help you,” he said, and he dutifully followed her instructions about closing paints and cleaning brushes, and slowly the space between them returned to something resembling normal, like the surface of a pond clearing the ripples after the splash of a fish escaping a hook. And then they were simply Caleb and Jester again, companionable members of the Mighty Nein, nothing more to see.  
  
But the fish still swam beneath the surface of the water, and as she dusted off her paint-stained fingers on her skirt, she looked up to see Caleb watching her a little too carefully, and something in her chest went tight again, if only for a moment.  
  
“All good?” he asked, ostensibly looking away to scan the room for any remaining mess.  
  
“I think so,” she said cheerfully, taking one last look herself. The Frumpkin canvas was safely in the haversack again, and the portrait lay drying on the bed. She looked over it once more; she’d done a good job, more than a good job, but the disdain in the portrait’s eyes made her want to shrink into nothingness in a way that reminded her of her childhood and she suddenly and ferociously didn’t care about it anymore; she just wanted _out_ , out of this too-small room where there was nothing to do but paint and pretend.  
  
She turned back to Caleb, waiting for her by the door, and wanted him to come with her, and to hold her hand when he did.  
  
“Time to go,” she said, and he followed her out the door, shut it behind her, and kept his hands to himself.  
  
“Lead on,” he said, though, as if he’d follow her anywhere, and it was _almost_ the same, and _almost_ as good; and she smiled at him as if she wanted nothing more, and he smiled back, lying too; and they left under the illusion of friendship.


End file.
